Dave continued his series on Elijah tonight, looking at 1 Kings 19:1-8. Elijah, the fearless, uncompromising prophet who rebuked kings face to face, had just won a great victory over the prophets of Baal, but surprisingly perhaps, instead of standing firm in this victory when facing Ahab and Jezebel, the spiritual toll of these battles and the lonely life he had led for the past three years in the wilderness while the rest of Israel pursued other gods meant Elijah was actually fearful, exhausted, spiritually depleted and despondent, fleeing from Jezebel’s threats and feeling so lonely and depressed that he asked God to let him die.
We all have our own ideas about God and how He should work in our lives, but instead of God actually agreeing to Elijah’s request to die, He sent practical help (food and drink), spoke in a gentle whisper to recommission Elijah and provided a companion, Elisha, to share the load. God still had work for Elijah to do, and in this period of isolation and exhaustion, Elijah had to let go of his previous ways of doing things and his preconceptions about God and come to a new understanding which was both renewing and reinvigorating; it was, in effect, like a new birth. Elijah was the archetypal ‘fire and brimstone’ prophet, full of zeal for God, but he had to learn a new way of relating to God.
Our society may well leave us feeling like Elijah. Godless lifestyles abound; there is a sense of ‘anything goes’ in morality all around us, and often there is a lack of compassion and the church seems no different to the world in many ways. We may well struggle to understand God’s ways, and in times of crisis, we may find we, like Elijah, have to look for God in ways that are unfamiliar to us. As we do this, however, being prepared to sacrifice our preconceptions about God, we will find He is there with us, speaking peace to our spirits and leading us to new commissions. Crisis can precipitate renewal and refreshment from God, if we will journey through the struggles (symbolised here by Elijah’s 40 day journey) to that place of stillness in Him.